Ph.D. University of Texas, 1991

UPRM Productivity Research Incentive (2013, 2014)
Alex Bonnilla Award in Physical Chemistry (1996)

Development of undergraduate course work in Physical and Analytical Chemistry up to date with state of the art research findings accepted by the scientific community.

Our research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of nanostructures and their broad range of applications in biomedical science and engineering and energy. We have authored or coauthored over 100 publications in applications of spectroscopy, nanotechnology, energy and sensing explosives and biochemicals of clinical relevance. Our work has received over 1000 citations over the years.

Biomedical Chemotherapeutic agents: New chemotherapy agents selective to cancer cells have been patented through work in our laboratory. These new agents have adequate size and selectivity to work in primary and metastatic cancers. The nanotechnology developed by us has been tested with cancer and normal fibroblasts. The results indicate that our nanotechnology limits the growth and survival rate of cancer cells but has no effect on normal fibroblasts.

Nanostructures to repair brain and cardiovascular damage.

Biomedical Sensors: Environmentally friendly sensor elements are developed for selective detection of cardiac and ischemic stroke biomarkers and HIV virus troponisms.

Energy: New nanoscaled structures for high efficient solar to electrical energy conversion are developed. These new structures trap solar energy into electric field and relay on inductive effect to transmit. These new elements have also limited geometries and few phonon modes to limit electron-phonon dispersion processes.

1. Quantum Confinement Effects in Calcium Sulfide: The Role of Indirect Transitions in the Red Shift of the Band Edge in Semiconductor Nanoparticles, Daniel Rivera-Vázquez, Yohaselly Santiago-Rodríguez, Miguel A González, Miguel E Castro-Rosario, MRS Volume 1694, mrss14-1694-ee10-09 (2014)
    
2. The Effect of Silver Nanofibers on the Deformation Properties of Blood Vessels: Towards the Development of New Nanotechnologies to Prevent Rupture of Aneurysms, Miguel González, Daniel Rivera, Alam Marcelino, Gabriela Agront, Rafael Rodríguez, Miguel Castro, Journal of Nanomaterials, (2014)
    
3. Killing cancer cells with nanotechnology: the effect of CaS nanostructures on the cell replication rate and survival of human mammary adenocarcinoma cell lines (780.9), Daniel Rivera, Nestor Carrasco, Louis Maldonado, Edu Suarez, Carlos Poventud, Carolina Marrero, Miguel Castro, The FASEB Journal, Volume 28 (1) Pages 780.9; (2014)
    
4. Use of Levitated Cells n3D BiOAssay System to Determine Cytotoxicity of Calcium Sulfide (CaS) Clusters in Malignant Cells as Potential Cancer Cell Targeted Therapy (LB583), Nestor Carrasco, Carlos Ortiz, Jaileen Quiñones, Geishamarie Feliciano, Angel Ortiz, Daniel Rivera, Miguel Castro, Edu Suarez Journal, The FASEB Journal, Volume 28 (1) Pages LB583 (2014)
    
5. Determination of the IC50 and LD50 of Calcium Sulfide (CaS) Clusters on Malignant Carcinoma and Normal Fibroblasts Cell Lines (LB580), Michael Manoharan-Valerio, Carlos Ortiz, Jaileen Quiñones, Geishamarie Feliciano, Angel Díaz, Daniel Rivera, Miguel Castro, Edu Suarez, The FASEB Journal Volume 28 Issue 1 LB580 (2014)